I have several requests from readers for text effects. One easy way to create text effects is the built-in Flash Timeline Effects. Although this article is about text, these effects can be applied to other things on the stage such as shapes, graphics, grouped objects, bitmaps and more.

One of the most useful features in Flash is the Flash component which is a pre-built movie clip that has controls, called parameters, that can be used to customize the generic component for your project´s needs.

When you first open Flash, you will see a Welcome screen which contains many options for taking your first steps with Flash Professional. Let's see what kind of help we can find when starting a new project.

Once in a while, I like to talk about how Flash is used in real-world applications. Did you know that those photo slide shows that you create are Flash based and the online Scrapblog builder RIA was created with Adobe Flex.